


Immunity

by aderyn



Series: Natural Facts [26]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, T-cells & evidence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-05-06
Packaged: 2017-11-04 22:51:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes cases hit Sherlock like flu, all freight train and fuck and fire.</p>
<p>Sherlock speaks in tongues a great deal, unless you know him, know it’s not tongues at all. (John)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immunity

_“As such, this adoptive transfer could have great therapeutic impact...”--Qiao et al, “Purging metastases in lymphoid organs using a combination of antigen-nonspecific adoptive T cell therapy, oncolytic virotherapy and immunotherapy”_

 

Sometimes cases hit Sherlock like flu, all freight train and fuck and fire and then you (he) fall (s) down and doesn’t rise for a week.  Sometimes it’s a smoulder and then a spike, in which (natural killers marshalled) he speaks in tongues, the names of gods _you_ didn't know existed and _he_ will afterwards delete.

Sometimes it’s chronic, consumptive, wasting on data while a nightingale trills at the window all night.

“John?”  It’s still dark in the flat, in the mind-palace, in the recesses of the bones.

“Yeah.” (Again.)

Sherlock speaks in tongues a great deal, unless you know him, and it’s not tongues at all.  He’s got it, alright, but he needs minding, needs mending.

“You've got it?” says Mycroft to John, on the phone.  
  
“I've got it,” says John, wiping his mouth with his hand.  
  
“You've got it?” says Lestrade.  
   
“I've got it,” says John, wiping his brow.  
  
He catches what he has to.  
  
***  
  
There are two kinds of immunity, innate and adaptive.  John’s got those and several off-brands or he could not, would not, have lasted a day. As it turns out, he'll last a day, a month, eighteen months, another eighteen months of which  he does not like to speak (defences gone), and then, without thinking, a lifetime, in which he adopts and acquires and freezes and burns.

**Author's Note:**

> "Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget  
> What thou among the leaves hast never known,  
> The weariness, the fever, and the fret..." –Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”


End file.
